


Where Skies Were Purple And Breath Was Praise

by archea2



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Dark, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Loyalty Gone Sideways, Resurrection, Romance, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 13:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20507789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: Then she was in Jadis’s arms, a girl about to glide into her first ballroom. And they were both poised on the next pool’s rim. There have been places called Lovers’ Leap in our world that involve water and a fall, and a great hazard, but the ladies’ faces only spoke of eternal strength.





	Where Skies Were Purple And Breath Was Praise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/gifts).

> Dear Wavesinger,
> 
> This is one pairing I had no idea was so enticing! Thanks for pointing me to it.
> 
> Note: out of the five characters, four are canonically dead at the start of the fic. One is revived, and she is, if anything, the major player here (along with her live partner). So I scratched my head a bit over the tags, and decided to play the safe Choose Not To card.

_ Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. "Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?" _

_ But while they were standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere _ outside _ that walled garden_. And what became of the others melted away, colourful tale to furtive ink to the wide white waste of a page with nothing to tell, but as for Peter, Edmund and Lucy they were pulled away by a force harsher than untelling. Next thing they knew, they were standing in some wood-like place, pale and dizzy, their heads swirled by a sense of deja vu. But this was not the entangled wood that had once grown in Cair Paravel in their absence, smelling of ruin and the tang of wild apples. No: this was a wood with few trees and many pools of water, and no wind to card the leaves or spark sunflecked ripples in the pools.

And while they stared, they saw a girl there, tall and graceful, with her mouth apple-red and her hair as long as it was dark.

“Su?” Edmund called out in a daze. “What are you - heck, aren’t you supposed to be in London?”

“What, and miss on your little field trip?” the girl said, and she _ was _ Susan, and it _ was _ the horn in her hand that had pulled them back. They looked at her, as still-shocked as the wood, for she was much more beautiful than the old nylon-and-cold-cream Su, but there was a silver cast to her beauty that made Lucy ache for the lost golden gates. She looked around, but everywhere she moved her eyes, they only saw the flat patches of water and the self-absorbed trees.

“This is the Wood Between the Words,” she whispered to the others, “that Lady Polly told us about.”

“Wise girl”, said another voice, that of a woman sidling up to Susan. The same beauty enveloped them like a breath of frost, pulling their faces together, and Susan smiled. She raised the woman’s hand to her mouth and licked across the pale fingers, and Lucy nearly cried out, for she had been told as a child that her tongue would stick to any surface coated with ice. But the woman parted her fingers and an apple appeared between them. It didn't look like one of the red apples that had once grown wild in their orchard at Cair Paravel, no - it shone like silver. “But not so wise as you, sister-self.” 

“Susan, don’t!” Peter cried, but for some reason his voice was no longer kingly. It felt thin to his ears, as if he had spoken across another plane of being. Edmund’s voice tried to join his, two reeds in the not-wind. “You little goose, don’t take her food! She’ll bait your senses, and -!”

“Ah,” said Susan, and she bit into the apple. Jadis held it out for her, and when Susan’s touched her fingertips with the tip of her mouth, they both shivered - the Witch too - and their laughter gleamed. Lucy, watching them, thought of the tale of Snow White, only the tale was being seen through a glass darkly, and she couldn’t tell which was the maiden, which the sorceress. 

“Sugar and spice - I see _ you _ remember the taste, Ed. But you are wrong to speak of bait. For we have struck a covenant, she and I, that we might find life eternal in each other after the Lion wronged us. ”

“We thought… we thought you’d forgotten about Aslan,” Lucy said. She tried to take a step to Susan, but it faltered. She faltered to move, as if she had become part of this fixed world, and when she looked down, it seemed to her that she could see the grey-green grass through her feet, that did not touch it. “Susan, what have you done to us?”

“You wronged Him first,” Peter echoed. “You forswore Narnia in speech and act.”

“No,” Susan said. “Not I. I only put childish things away, which was _your_ Narnia, Peter. For you speak of forgetting, but among all of you, I was the one who never forgot.” She leant against the Witch, Jadis, and turned up her face to be kissed. She did not do it like a simpering girl, but with the directness of a queen who requests and bestows at once. Their kiss made a ripple glance from pool to pool, as if the water had turned into a force, and a sound of leaves in the trees. 

“Never forgot that he let me grow into a woman, with a woman’s flow and a woman’s thirsts, only to toss me back into a child’s body, with all the memories and only the pains of growing to look forward to. Think you I am warped? Then Aslan warped me. Did you think I had it any better at school? _ Yes, Miss! No, Miss! Can I be excused, please, Miss! _ A queen in a girl’s body-bag. Blitzed out of a home.” She stroked a hand down the little ivory horn. Then she pushed one finger in it, idly. Lucy turned her head away. “Only this for a keepsake. Caspian should have known better than insist I take it back.”

“Susan,” Peter said, his voice shrivelled up with grief. “Susan, oh, Su, what have you done?”

“Waited,” Susan said. She looked at Jadis, and Jadis looked at her, both of them shrewd in their mutual understanding. “We’re fairly good at it, sister-self. Even with our blood straining to find the right time, the right age, even with our dreams rushing us. We’re good at lying in wait. And then -” She held up the horn. “We’re good at summoning allies.”

“You could have come with us,” Lucy whispered. She felt shrunken and grey, too.

“Oh, but don’t you know yet? You’re dead, Lucy. All of you are dead, and our parents. And Narnia to be dead alongside of us. There’s Aslan’s love for you - a lion’s share, only there has to be some killing first. And right now? He is busy undoing Narnia. Well. This Narnia.” She lifted a slim foot and pointed it to the pool next to Lucy.

“Little boy,” Jadis told Edmund, her voice proudly calm. “You never understood the cold. It keeps - it keeps for a very long time. Even what it kills, it preserves. My heart is glad that another understood, and found her way to my core. ”

And Lucy thought of the tale and its coffin of glass, and she shivered.

“So many pools,” Jadis mused, as if reading her mind. “So many mirrors.”

“We can still dive back,” Edmund was telling Peter, but the latter shook his head. They were ghosts, he knew. In this Aslan-less space, he was neither boy nor bearded king, nor corpse, nor saved soul. He was but a shadow in the pool’s inert glass.

And Susan - Susan was playing with Jadis’s white arms, that she had once watched at the end of a knife. There was a blue sheen to the arms, kindling a new light, and Edmund’s memory spoke before he did: _Prepare the blue fire_. Yes, it had been a fair deal between them - a life for a life, a tale as old as time. 

“My true pulse, most fair lady,” Susan said, smiling at her as if she was still in their London house, biting her lips to redden them before she stepped out into the garden. “Will you walk with me?” 

“So many worlds,” Jadis said. She took off her toque of white fur and set it on Susan’s dark head like a crown. It was as if her old furor of triumph had left her, now she had once again met her match, only for the match to strike a flame and a covenant. “And the Lion well gated in his. Our quest awaits, dear life.”

“Susan!” Lucy’s voice rose from the gash in her soul, a final, phantom plea. “Susan the Gentle!”

Susan heard; Susan stilled. She turned, and swept her arm into a half-circle: the gentlest toss that ever was, so that something white rolled to the ghosts’ feet. It was solidly distant - it was the small ivory horn.

Then she was in Jadis’s arms, a girl about to glide into her first ballroom. And they were both poised on the next pool’s rim. There have been places called Lovers’ Leap in our world that involve water and a fall, and a great hazard, but the ladies’ faces only spoke of eternal strength. The blue fire made a flicker with the red lips, when all four touched again. And then - there was a leap - and a laughter - and the woods went still again.

_By the waters of Life we sat together,_

_Hand in hand, in the golden days_

_Of the beautiful early summer weather,_

_When skies were purple and breath was praise._

_Thomas Noel (1919)_


End file.
